Savannah River Tritium Enterprise (SRTE) went above and beyond its FY13 productivity savings goals. Overall, SRTE’s validated productivity savings totaled $2.605 million, which represents more than 116 percent of the goal. Performance against other Continuous Improvement goals was impressive as well, with 20 percent of employees engaged in a Continuous Improvement (CI) action each month and each division initiating at least one Lean Event per month.

Among the 28 CI projects validated in FY13 were:

The development of a calibration process that will maintain the Measuring and Test Equipment tools for facility operations, while reducing the overall cost of the program (validated savings more than $377,000)

A Glove Test Project to help resolve permeation and glove degradation issues, using SRTE Engineering interns to perform the needed testing (validated savings of nearly $176,000)

The replacement of lead acid batteries in the standby diesel generator with environmentally friendly absorbed gas mat batteries, eliminating the need for a safety shower (validated savings more than $118,000)

About the photo:P.K. Hightower of SRTE Quality & Performance Excellence presents to Joe Shake of SRTE Engineering a shirt in recognition of his contributions to SRTE's productivity savings.